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Emotions

When the tears come, she doesn’t know what to do with them. She lies in the dark and her pillow becomes damp and cold, but she can’t be sure what she is crying about.

At times like this, she wishes more than anything that she could pinpoint the source of her misery. There are always triggers, but never anything that warrants the depths of despair she plummets into. Is she lonely? Dissatisfied with her life? Bored and stagnant? Or are these just chemical imbalances that flood her brain, as random as nature?

Usually, when the morning comes, the sadness has washed away, as though sucked out of her by her dreams. It takes a day or two, maybe, for her to slip back into contentment. And she forgets that she was ever miserable.

It’s like the difference between waking and dreaming. When she is happy, these emotions feel as though they are her real life, and the sadness becomes a shade, a dreamworld. It seems less real, illogical, and unimportant. A character flaw she needs to move away from.

She fears the dreamworld of sadness. Because in her fantasy of life, this dark side of emotion is a bad sign, a red flag, an indication that all is not right, that something needs to change. It feels like a setback to happiness, to everything she has worked for in the wakefulness of contentment.

So she wakes in the morning and feels better, but worried. The sun is struggling to break through a soft blanket of cloud, and she struggles with it. She knows everything is fine, but the niggling worry still holds tight to her ankles, slowing her down. Because how can you tell when enough is enough? Where do you draw the line?